Au

Aagoo / Oedipus;
2007

Find it at:

Portland's Luke Wyland seems aware that, despite the attempts of many poets and songwriters over time to prove otherwise, the natural world is not, in fact, simple. At any given time, billions of births, growths, reproductions, and deaths are simultaneously happening, and an attempt to take it all in is impossible at best. But, nevertheless, Wyland-- with a group of Oregonian collaborators in tow-- approaches nature with a broad scope: The sound design on his eponymous debut under this name feels composed by his amplification of the taken-for-granted. His process, unconscious as it might be, leads to an album of free music that is dynamic and serene; songs guided by an understanding of the bucolic that grasps its elegance as well as its occasional tumult.

Wyland is a classically-trained pianist, and the instrument's inventive incorporation couples with his unique treatment of stringed noisemakers to lend Au an intriguing baroque and experimental sensibility. On the patient instrumental "Shelter", a saloon-tuned piano slowly rises from a murk of rolling drone, anticipating the jingling, druidic-style chant at its climax. Album-closing "Ask the River" resembles the rhythmic explorations of composer Arnold Dreyblatt, whose unique timbral inclination led him to, among other things, string upright basses with piano wire and strike them until they came together. "River" feels like a rural cousin of Dreyblatt's Nodal Excitation; acutely plucked strings slowly accumulate, eventually coalescing into a distinguishable chime of their own.

For simple genre-placement purposes, Au can be grouped with what's generally referred to as "avant-folk." The record's first two songs especially stand out in this regard, with a strong resemblance to the howling revelry of Animal Collective. "Boute" and "Sum" feel like Feels-- cresting toward intense, sun-scorched melodic moments, then receding into incessant tick-tacks and smeared snarls of instrumentation-- and establish ideas that reappear in various guises throughout the record. "Boute" opens with a clacking rhythm guiding an elegant piano motif, before Wyland's partially discernible vocals expand and lead the song skyward. Only for a moment, however; in one fell swoop, all vanishes save the piano, leaving the song to rise again, which it does magnificently. "Sum" takes an even more suite-like approach, beginning with an intense fanfare that abruptly gives way to a brief ukelele, which also suddenly stops. Zoë Wright's weightless vocals glide over a frolicking foundation of toy piano and increasingly hyperactive strings, and the whole thing breaks into a canter. The song ends as a radiant hootenanny, a blustery tribal tangle that threatens to explode, but instead gracefully glides back to earth.

Sarah Winchester (A Weather) contributes vocals to the slow-burning "Death", which highlights Au's Appalachian underpinnings, and demonstrates that often, on the other side of the blinding light is waiting a somber black. In stark contrast to what came before it, "Death" is all empty space and sepulchral sentiment, as Winchester and Wyland's lament drags forward like a horse-drawn coffin: "Bring me my death/ Bring me my shadow." The instrumental "Remain" follows "Death" like a time-lapse of ivy growing on a headstone: Resonating piano notes, buzzing plucked strings, and percussive miscellany slowly mature and fill space, accelerated when a menacing drum and threatening high-pitched rattle appear suddenly.

Visitors to Au's website seeking a proper pronunciation of the group's name are informed by Wyland that how it's said is up to them. The same standard could be applied to Wyland's music under the mysterious moniker, as well. Au is both expansive and accessible enough that it leads listeners to take from it what they feel comfortable with, or to read themselves in his arrangements. For a record so entranced with an en plein air approach to music making, it refreshingly offers the opportunity to leave a unique footprint.